Big Desktop Images(2560x1024)

I recently added a second video card to my
Sun Blade 100
at work. The standard
Solaris X server supports Xinerama, allowing me to create one big screen
across two monitors, with a resolution of 2560x1024. Dual-head is getting to
be more common, as both the Linux and Mac worlds also allow this merging
of monitors. So I thought I'd share the images I use as desktop images,
(or wallpaper, or backdrops, or backgrounds, or whatever you want to
call them)
and let you know where you can obtain more like them.

In memory of the crew of STS-107

NASA's contributions to the world far exceed the images I have placed here
(and the millions of others they have taken). Their contributions to
science have increased our understanding of the Universe
and our place in it, and they have improved the quality of our lives thru
the technological advances which surround us.
But the most important contribution NASA has given the world must certainly
be the inspiration, and the chance to dream a little more and dare a little
more.

The crew of Columbia that left us on STS-107 understood all of this, and they
gave their lives for this lofty purpose. I will be eternally grateful for
their sacrifice, and deeply sad for their loss. Rick D. Husband, Kalpana
Chawla, Pilot William C. McCool,
David M. Brown, Laurel B. Clark, and Ilan Ramon represent the very best
in humanity.

I also wish to acknowledge the contributions of the shuttle
Columbia itself. Among its many successful missions, Columbia placed the
Chandra X-Ray Telescope in orbit. My limited professional connection to
that mission has deepened the impact of this tragedy for me personally.
Images from that mission (STS-93), are among the images below.

Copyright information

It is my understanding that these images are all in the public domain,
based on a general understanding of how NASA handles it's photos. I have
NOT specifically checked each individual image to insure that it
is not copyrighted, therefore I will NOT be held responsible for
the accuracy of my guess regarding their copyright status. If you know
that I'm wrong on any or all of these images, please
let
me know.

In the same spirit of openness that NASA has shown, I release any rights
I may have with respect to the editing I have performed on these images.
If the original images are in the public domain, then mine are too.

GRIN images

Well, these images might make you GRIN, but that's really an acronym
for the GReat Images of Nasa archive.
Most of the images I currently have came from here. There are truly some
great and historic images here, and the best part is that they are
freely available, and large enough to work with. I've barely scratched
the surface of this archive.

None of the original images are the correct aspect ratio, these images
have all been cropped to some degree. I've selected images
that lended themselves to cropping for the wide screen, mostly just removing
extra junk. In some cases however, the character of the picture was
changed significantly, and I'll try to make note of that (except for the
several times that footprints in the lunar dust were cropped out).
There is a link to the original GRIN image in the description.
Click on the image to download my 2560x1024 version.

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F-16 model
WindTunnel test of F-16 Scamp model with laser illuminated smoke
cross-sections.Original:http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/ABSTRACTS/GPN-2000-001935.htmlImage Manipulation: Shrunk, and chopped top and bottom. Do you
really need to see more of the mounting bracket?Image Quality: Good

Duke on Plum crater
Charles M. Duke on the rim of Plum crater, Apollo 16Original:http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/ABSTRACTS/GPN-2000-001132.htmlImage Manipulation: Shrunk, cropped top and bottom. A colorful
camera lens effect was lost from the top.Image Quality: Adequate (could be sharper)

Tracks to Antares
LRV tire tracks leading to the Lunar Module, Apollo 14. This is one of
my favorite Apollo photographs.Original:http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/ABSTRACTS/GPN-2000-001145.htmlImage Manipulation: Shrunk, cropped top and bottom. A big sunburst
in the upper right was cropped out. This picture was better before I
cropped it, but it's still good. Unfortunately it doesn't split well
across two monitors, the LM gets broken apart as do the tracks.Image Quality: Grainy

Irwin next to Rover
James B. Irwin next to the LRV in front of Mount Hadley, Apollo 15Original:http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/ABSTRACTS/GPN-2000-001117.htmlImage Manipulation: The image lost something in cropping. I
compromised and chopped both the top of the mountain and the bottom of the
LRV. There is also a good shadow below the LRV that had to be cropped.Image Quality: Good, except mountains are grainy

Trampled Lunar Soil
Trampled lunar soil trimmed from the bottom of the previous image. This
makes for a backdrop thats less like a photo and more like a texture.Original:http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/ABSTRACTS/GPN-2000-001140.htmlImage Manipulation: Shrunk, and cropped most of the top, and a bit of the bottom.Image Quality: Good

STS-31 Launch
Space Shuttle Columbia waits its turn while Discovery lifts off on mission
STS-31.Original:http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/ABSTRACTS/GPN-2000-000684.htmlImage Manipulation: Shrunk and cropped top and bottom. The top of
the closer launch pad is lost; so are trees and water at the bottom.Image Quality: Adequate, somewhat grainy, many scratches and flaws
from scanned photograph.

STS-66 Launch
Atlantis lift-off for STS-66.Original:http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/ABSTRACTS/GPN-2000-000763.htmlImage Manipulation: This image lost the best part off of the bottom.
There is a huge flock of birds in the water, all scattering because of
the launch. But cropping with the birds in looked bad to me -- most of
the shuttle was missing. The shuttle and the solid rocket booster are
neatly bisected by the two monitors, which works well, IMHO.Image Quality: Adequate, scratches and flaws
from scanned photograph.

SAFER Rescue System Tested
Astronauts Carl J. Meade and Mark C. Lee (red strip on suit) test the
new Simplified Aid for EVA Rescue (SAFER) system some 130 nautical
miles above Earth.Original:http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/ABSTRACTS/GPN-2000-001077.htmlImage Manipulation: Shrunk, cropped top and bottom. Lost some clouds
on top, and most of the shuttle on the bottom.Image Quality: Very Good

Orion NebulaGorgeous, very high resolution montage of 15 Hubble images of the Orion Nebula.Original:http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/ABSTRACTS/GPN-2000-000983.htmlImage Manipulation: Shrunk, cropped top and bottom. This whole image
is great, I picked a strip across that middle that I thought had the most
interesting features.Image Quality: Outstanding

Orion Nebula Again
Another Take on the previous image. This one seems to have better
composition, and somehow the top looks like it belongs at the top
(even though there is no "up" in space).Original:http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/ABSTRACTS/GPN-2000-000983.htmlImage Manipulation: Rotated, shrunk, cropped top and bottom.Image Quality: Outstanding

Chandra Images

This is the project I work (very indirectly) on. For those who don't know,
the Chandra X-Ray telescope is in orbit, like the Hubble (but a much larger
orbit -- it can't be serviced by the shuttle), and takes images in the X-Ray
portion of the spectrum. X-Rays are only emitted by very high-energy
processes, like the destruction that occurs around the edge of a black hole.

Chandra doesn't have the high resolution of Hubble (X-Ray imaging is just
a "wee-bit" more complicated), so until there are more montages, most of this
is photos from the shuttle mission that launched Chandra. Actually though,
even Hubble images look bad scaled up to this size, and all of the Hubble
images above are also montages.

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Galactic Center Survey
This is mosaic of several X-Ray images, which gives great resolution for
a beautiful backdrop.Original:http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2002/gcenter/index.html
(download the TIF file for the best raw image)Image Manipulation: Shrunk slightly, and a bit of extra black border
added at top and bottom.Image Quality: Good (should be very good, but it suffers from JPEG
artifacting, which is my fault, not the fault of the original - I'll
redo it at some point).

Columbia About to Launch
The sparklers are ignited, but the engines haven't started. Rotated to
fill the screen (duh).Original:http://chandra.harvard.edu/resources/illustrations/launch/99pasparklers.htmlImage Manipulation: Rotated 90 degrees clockwise, shrunk, and trimmed
the (new) top, bottom, and right. Looks very different on its side.
The launch tower was cut out.Image Quality: Almost Very Good

Other Images

Images from various other locations.

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Infrared Saturn
This (false color) infrared image was taken with Hubble's Near Infrared
Camera and
Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS).Original:http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/photo_gallery/photogallery-saturn.html (halfway down the page)Image Manipulation: Shrunk, cropped top and bottom.Image Quality: Good (blurry, but good contrast, some striping
presumably from NICMOS is visible)

Space Station EVA
Wonderfully sharp image of Franklin R. Chang-Diaz working on the space
station during STS-111.Original:http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/shuttle/sts-111/html/s111e5033.htmlImage Manipulation: Cropped on all sides. Not shrunk at all.Image Quality: Excellent, except that JPEG artifacts show
in the area that is supposed to be blurry; again this is my fault and
I should rework the image.

Almost Live Satellite Photos

The Geostationary
Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) are in
(you guessed it) geostationary orbits, and they regularly take pictures
of a good portion of the earth. BIG pictures, in beautiful black and white.
There are currently two GOES satellites that are operational, GOES-8
(aka GOES-East) at 75 West latitude, and GOES-10 (GOES-West) at 135 West
latitude (there are also three more in orbit as spares, GOES-9, 11, and 12).

There are four or five different standard images of different portions
of the earth, you can write a script to parse them and figure out
which ones have the area of interest for you. Or you can just grab any
image over about 3 MB, which should be a full disk image of the earth.

I had a perl script for a single, 1280x1024 screen that would keep the most
recent image of my neck of the woods on the screen. It broke, so when
I fix it and modify it for the wide screen (to show the top half of the
hemisphere across the two monitors), I'll put it here.
In the meantime, get yourself hacking, or just grab one of the bigger images
the next time there's a big pretty storm.

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GOES-8 03-Sep-02 13:25
This is top half of the full disk of the earth taken by GOES-8 on
September 3rd, 2002 at 13:25 EST.Image Manipulation: No shrinking just cropped to fit.Image Quality: Very Good.

You also might want to check out
XPlanet, which has provisions
for showing a very nice map of the earth, with up-to-date cloud information.
A number of projections are available, some of which are appropriate for
wide-screen displays.

Other sources of images

Send
URLs of images -- both big raw images, and those pre-sized for jumbo
displays.

Xinerama gets its name from Cinerama, a forgotten widescreen technology
which uses three projectors and a big wide curved screen. High quality
stills from the Cinerama Movies (if available) would be great for either
dual-head or three-head setups.

Abel Gance's "Napoleon" (1927) was filmed for three projectors, (predating
Cinerama) and would be great for three-head setups.

Solaris and CDE Notes

CDE can make it tough to set the background unless you want to convert
things to Pixmap format and then use the CDE interface. I wrote
a script that will paint most common image types onto the
CDE backdrop. The script is available for download, along with additional
information, on my "Setting the CDE Backdrop"
page.

XFree86 notes

Some versions (perhaps 4.1.x?) of XFree86 don't correctly display wide
images across all screens in Xinerama, instead they tile the first screen
onto the rest. This should be fixed in 4.2.x and later releases. Read
the previous section if you are seeing this same bug in Solaris.